Black Ink and Regrets
by Aleia15
Summary: He can see all of them, all the marks of his grief and reminders of his mistakes. Remixed from Troublesome jv's Inked


**Black Ink and Regrets (The I've Got You Under My Skin Remix)**

"Are you sure, Iruka-sensei?"

Iruka nods slowly, offering the crumpled piece of paper with the sloppy drawing in it. It's nothing special, and even a child could probably do it better. He's sure he's seen Naruto scrawling that same thing somewhere and it didn't look half as bad. But it has to be this one.

It's the only one he has.

"Yes," he says out loud at the dubious expression in Tsukano-san's face.

Tsukano-san stares at him considering, taking in the dark circles under his eyes and the air or exhaustion surrounding him. "You don't look good, Iruka-sensei," he finally says, opening the door to the back room and ushering him in.

"I know," Iruka answers with a mirthless laugh. He looks like shit. Feels like it, too. And if Tsukano-san, who's always seen him at his lowest without even raising an eyebrow, comments on it, it has to be pretty bad.

Iruka follows slowly, his feet dragging on the floor and taking him reluctantly to his destination.

He's here on his own free will, of course, but part of him wants to be anywhere but. Wants for it not to be necessary.

"Where do you want it this time?" Tsukano-san asks with the same detached courtesy he always has, though he must be fully aware of what has brought Iruka back to his shop. All Konoha knows, and Tsukano-san's indifference is a welcomed change after the pity and empty platitudes he has been subjected to for the past days.

"The waist." Iruka says, stripping off his uniform shirt and baring his torso, his other tattoos standing starkly over tan skin.

"It's going to hurt."

Iruka knows, but that pain can't be worse than the one he's already going through. Nothing can.

"Yes."

They don't speak anymore after that, the only noise in the small room that of the tools Tsukano-san is getting ready. Iruka bends slightly forward and presses his forearms against the stretcher, leaning all his weight on them and tensing in anticipation when Tsukano-san takes his place behind him.

At the first touch of the needle against his skin Iruka feels like he can breathe again, the weight that has been crushing his lungs since the moment Kakashi's chakra vanished two days ago lifting minutely. It's still there, and it's still unbearably painful, but at least for the next hour while Tsukano-san works, Iruka's mind can focus on the physical pain and get a small reprieve from his grief.

It's not going to last, of this he's perfectly aware, but he'll take whatever he can get.

Iruka closes his eyes while Tsukano-san works, listening to the insistent buzz of the needle and feeling the burn where it penetrates the skin.

His mind is not there, though.

...

_"So, how long are you going to be away this time?"_

Kakashi turned around, grabbing two beers from the fridge and passing one to Iruka. He uncapped his and took a long drink before answering.

"Not long."

"And that in Kakashi-speak means?" Iruka insisted irritably, opening his own bottle and drinking from it. He knew it wasn't Kakashi's fault, but he was feeling annoyed that Kakashi had to leave precisely that day. It was their anniversary, Kakashi was supposed to be off duty.

The heat wasn't helping either, and neither did the fact that his class had behaved horribly and he had a pounding headache.

"It means not long," Kakashi answered, his mouth settling in a hard line at Iruka's expression and tone. "What's wrong with you?"

Iruka shook his head. "Nothing. Should you be drinking before a mission?"

The look Kakashi shot him was clearly unimpressed. "I don't have to leave yet, just awfully early in the morning. I can have one beer if I want to."

Iruka nodded, grabbing his beer and moving to the living room. Kakashi followed him, a frown firmly affixed to his face. "Have I done something?"

For a second Iruka didn't respond, he just took his pack and dumped the contents on the table. He had not had a good day, and Kakashi's news had not improved it. He was spoiling for a fight. "No."

"Why are you angry with me then?" Kakashi pushed, taking a seat in front of Iruka and staring at him.

"I'm not." Iruka looked down at the first scroll and grabbed his red pen, fighting the urge to cross the entire thing and fail the student just on the basis of their hideous penmanship.

"Yes you are, and now you're lying to me," Kakashi insisted, his tone moving from curious to irritated pretty fast.

Iruka put the pen on top of the table and looked up at Kakashi. "Yes, I am. Happy now?"

Kakashi narrowed his eyes at Iruka, an expression very few people in Konoha had seen, and none of them without the mask. With the thin lips pressed together, the furrow in his brow and the black patch over his Sharingan, Kakashi looked really frightening. "Why?"

Iruka was way past the stage where Kakashi could scare him, if he had ever been in it. "Why what?"

"Why are you angry with me? Have I done something?" It was clear in Kakashi's tone that he didn't know, and that angered Iruka even more. It was so like him to have forgotten.

"You're leaving

tomorrow_," he said and Kakashi stared at him uncomprehendingly for a second._

"I have a mission."

"

Tomorrow._"_

Kakashi took a drink from his beer and put it back on the table with a little too much force, the noise of glass hitting wood too loud in the room. "I don't pick when they send me on missions, Iruka. You know that."

"You were supposed to ask for the week off."

"

I did._"_

Iruka stared at him for an instant. "Then why are you leaving?"

Kakashi sighed. "I don't choose when a high ranking jounin is going to deflect and go rogue, and I can't disobey an order from my Hokage. Why are you being so irrational about this?"

Iruka wondered about the same. He knew he was being unfair, and though it wasn't the first time they had a fight, it was probably the most stupid one they'd had to date. And yet, he couldn't stop. "They could have sent someone else."

"But they haven't."

Iruka drained his beer, feeling the pressure from his headache against his temples. "You could have-"

"No, I couldn't. And you know it. This is who I am."

"Yes, you're right. This is who

you_are." Iruka surprised himself at the venom in his words, and knew he was about to go too far before the words escaped his mouth. And yet, he was unable to keep them in. "Sharingan Kakashi, the perfect soldier. Always ready to take on orders as if he has no life outside missions, like he did before he had one."_

He saw Kakashi's tiny flinch, his expression smoothing into blankness, all hint of emotion wiped clean off it. For all intent and purposes, Kakashi might have been wearing his mask. This was the moment Iruka knew he had said too much, and opened his mouth to apologize. It was the heat, and that stupid headache, and the frustration of having to, once again, spend the bloody anniversary on his own.

Kakashi beat him to it, thought. "Yes, I am a good soldier.

Someone has to._" This was delivered quietly, tonelessly, aimed to hurt. It did._

The apology left his mind as quickly as it entered it. "Some of us try to be more than that, seeing as we can't achieve the perfection of a thousand jutsu," Iruka retorted just as quietly. "How presumptuous of me to imagine that

us_ could be more important than that. To suppose that maybe, for the first time, we could spend an important date together. One day, after five years. But _you_ have a mission, and _I_know now the order of your priorities."_

"You-" Kakashi cut himself off and stood up from the couch, clenching his fists by his side. "You know what; I don't want to have this fight right now. I have an early mission in the morning and need to be rested." He turned on his heel and went to their bedroom without a backward glance to Iruka.

He stayed in the living room for a while, watching without seeing the homework he had to mark and wondering what the hell had just happened, how he had lost it so badly over nothing.

When he went to bed, Kakashi was still wide awake, his back firmly turned to Iruka's side of the bed. He climbed in it and closed his eyes, still too angry, mostly with himself.

Sleep was long to come.

When Iruka woke up in the morning Kakashi was already gone. In the kitchen, pinned to the fridge, wasn't the corny goodbye he usually left behind when going on missions. Iruka took the piece of paper there, and read the short note:

I'll come back soon. We have to talk._It was signed with a badly scrawled henohenomoheji._

"Yes, we'll talk," Iruka said to the empty kitchen, crumpling the note and tossing it on the counter.

Iruka spent the day in a terrible mood, and it didn't improve when he came home at night to an empty house for an anniversary celebration that wasn't going to happen.

The bad mood lasted for an entire week, being slowly erased by a sense of unease at the lack of news from Kakashi. By the time they had officially lost contact with him, when Kakashi missed his checking point in the mission, Iruka couldn't even remember why he had been angry in the first place.

He came back home that night and picked the crumpled note, still sitting on top of the counter. He smoothed it the best he could, touching lightly the signature in it.

When Kakashi's chakra vanished completely from Iruka's awareness, anger was the furthest thing from his mind.

...

"It's done."

Tsukano-san's voice brings Iruka back to the present, the absence of noise and pain anchoring him to reality again.

The pressure in his chest his back, thought slightly dimmed by the dull ache in his waist. Iruka straightens up, taking a deep breath to compose himself.

"Do you want to see it?"

Iruka doesn't. It's enough to know it's there, but still he nods his head accepting the mirror Tsukano-san is handing him. There, standing swollen against angry red skin, is a perfect replica of the henohenomoheji Kakashi left him, inked in black on his skin. And there is something to be said about Tsukano-san's skill; the man is very good at what he does.

"Thank you," Iruka says as Tsukano-san spreads clear ointment over the tattoo, covering it with a piece of transparent film and taping it in place.

"You know how to take care of it," he says as Iruka hands the payment, putting his top back on carefully and taking back the paper he handed before.

Iruka does, it's not the first one after all.

He takes off his clothes the moment he is back home, cleaning the new tattoo carefully and staring at his reflection in the mirror. He can see all of them, all the marks of his grief and reminders of his mistakes. The numbers on his neck for loss, the bar code on his side for betrayal, the kanji on his ankle for rebirth, the mark of a hunter on his shoulder for protection, and now the signature of love lost.

He should have known better than to fight with Kakashi that night, and now he's gone, Iruka has to live with that regret. The tattoo is there so he never forgets.

He presses his hand against the henohenomoheji when he feels his chest threatening to explode, the sharp pain clearing his head immediately. He's not sure whether it would be more painful if the last words he had said to Kakashi hadn't been uttered in anger. Probably not.

He goes to bed like that, the coldness of the empty side next to him and the heat of his wounded skin reminding him of what he's lost. His hand takes up almost permanent residence next to the tattoo, the pain of the touch the only thing that seems to keep him breathing.

It's a gesture he repeats often for the next two days.

...

His class has been strangely well behaved for the past week, probably owing to the fact that Iruka is not looking his best and has already snapped twice. In the back of the class a timid hand is raised in question, and Iruka fights the urge to sigh.

They have been going over the same thing for the entire week; the kids shouldn't have any doubt about chakra pathways in their minds by that point in time.

He presses his hand against his waist for an instant, forcing himself not to wince at the pain and opens his mouth to reply when the door of the classroom slams open.

Iruka turns, annoyed at the interruption, and closes his mouth again abruptly when he sees Izumo standing at the door, his breath coming in short gasps.

"We found him!" Izumo says, and Iruka grips the edge of his desk to keep himself steady. "We found Kakashi. He's alive."

The room explodes with the voices of children, all of them talking at the same time though Iruka can't hear them.

The pressure is gone. The fight, the pain, and the past days of regret don't matter anymore.

He can breathe again.

...


End file.
